The MBTA on Thursday began removing advertisements critical of Boston’s public schools from its trains, less than a day after they went up, setting off a dispute in which the nonprofit that paid for them called the move censorship and the transit agency said the ads had never been properly approved.
A Globe reporter spotted the ads Wednesday night on a Red Line train. By Thursday they were coming down. “These ads do not comply with the MBTA’s advertising guidelines and were placed in the system by our advertising contractor without the required MBTA review prior,” Maya Bingaman, a T spokeswoman, said in an email. The contractor is Outfront.
The group behind the campaign, a nonprofit called Next Chapter Boston, is led by local education advocates Mary Tamer and Vernee Wilkinson. Ms. Tamer, a former Boston School Committee member appointed by Mayor Thomas Menino, said the T had approved the ads weeks before they ran, and she shared a screenshot sent by an Outfront employee confirming they were in place on Thursday morning.
“Why is telling the truth about the poor outcomes in the BPS against the standards of the MBTA?” she said. “This is a poor reflection on honesty and transparency in government and an attempt to squash a needed call to action for improvement. This effort is about one clear goal: to see significant academic gains in student outcomes in the Boston Public Schools.”
Ms. Tamer declined to disclose a full list of the group’s donors, saying only that seven or eight had contributed, among them an out-of-state foundation that gives millions of dollars to causes and asks recipients not to identify it. She named two donors: the local philanthropists Rick Burnes and Michael Champa.
Mr. Champa, a retired technology entrepreneur who has served as a Dana-Farber trustee, said in a brief interview that he backed the campaign out of concern about the schools. “Massachusetts has always prided itself as having one of the best education systems in the country, but when seven of 10 kids in the city of Boston can’t read at grade level, that borders on a crisis,” he said. “Boston educators and the mayor, have to acknowledge that there’s a significant problem, and then put a plan together to fix it.”
Mr. Burnes, a founder of Charles River Ventures, has given heavily to candidates and political causes, including $60,000 to the Coalition for Healthy Democracy, which wants to end the state’s party primary system. In 2024 he donated $100,000 to the group that opposed a ballot question that would have eliminated the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement, according to state records. He did not respond to an interview request on Thursday.
Ms. Tamer said the ads were created by an out-of-state agency, and that the children shown in the photographs do not attend Boston Public Schools. The group has also been publicizing the district’s test data on its own website.
The latest state scores, released last week, showed that 29 percent of Boston students in grades 3 to 8 met or exceeded expectations in English and math, and one-third of 10th graders met that standard — both below statewide figures. The district, the largest in Massachusetts, ranks in the bottom third of districts for MCAS scores in grades 3 to 8. It spent about $34,000 per student in 2024, the most recent state data available, while serving some of the state’s most vulnerable children: most Boston students are classified as high needs, including those who are low income, learning English or living with disabilities.
Boston officials, in a statement, pointed to gains in math scores in grades 6 and 8 and an uptick on the eighth-grade science exam. Mayor Michelle Wu, Superintendent Mary Skipper and Jeri Robinson, the School Committee chairperson, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Lea Serena, executive vice president of the Boston Teachers Union, noted in a statement that test scores across the country have declined since before the pandemic. “Perhaps if they really want to help local students, this group should funnel the money they’re putting into subway ads toward restoring the funds that the Trump administration has taken away from public school students,” she said.
Ms. Tamer and Ms. Wilkinson faulted Ms. Wu, Ms. Skipper and the School Committee for not spending enough time discussing the district’s poor academic outcomes or their plans to improve them. As of Thursday, the ads donors had paid for were no longer on the T.
“This is the conversation that needs to happen,” Ms. Tamer said, “because you can’t change a problem until you acknowledge its existence.”